Please help me pick my first iMac

I am going to purchase a 27 inch Imac soon, but can't decide which one to get. I am hoping to keep the price around $1500. Will beused for everyday use,email, web surfing,FaceTime, photos,etc, and some mild gaming. I understand the differences will be processor speed and video cards. Let's here some opinions

I am going to purchase a 27 inch Imac soon, but can't decide which one to get. I am hoping to keep the price around $1500. Will beused for everyday use,email, web surfing,FaceTime, photos,etc, and some mild gaming. I understand the differences will be processor speed and video cards. Let's here some opinions

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The baseline model will do. Never upgrade RAM from Apple. Their prices are daylight robbery.

But get a Fusion or a 256GB SSD. It's well worth the upgrade.

I personally think the 256GB SSD is better since it has no moving parts, and so is one hell of a lot more reliable than Fusion, which still has moving parts. When the HDD part of Fusion fails, the entire drive is toast. Basically, the Fusion is as likely to fail as a regular HDD.

The baseline model will do. Never upgrade RAM from Apple. Their prices are daylight robbery.

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Not anymore at least when I did my research before getting the 16 GB of RAM in my 27" iMac. Getting a 16 GB kit(2 x 8 GB sticks) would be $183 from OWC or $171 from Crucial. I got the EDU discount so 16 GB of RAM from Apple was only $180( $200 regular price). So getting it directly from Apple was a no brainer for me. Not only does it come with 16 GB and I don't have to install the sticks myself, I am now ready to easily go to 32 GB of ram if I ever need to and I don't have to deal with the two 4 GB sticks that came with the iMac.

Not anymore at least when I did my research before getting the 16 GB of RAM in my 27" iMac. Getting a 16 GB kit(2 x 8 GB sticks) would be $183 from OWC or $171 from Crucial. I got the EDU discount so 16 GB of RAM from Apple was only $180( $200 regular price). So getting it directly from Apple was a no brainer for me. Not only does it come with 16 GB and I don't have to install the sticks myself, I am now ready to easily go to 32 GB of ram if I ever need to and I don't have to deal with the two 4 GB sticks that came with the iMac.

I have been comparing the MD095LL/A vs the ME088LL/A at MacMall. 1499 or 1729. Difference is 2.9 or 3.2 chip, and the video cards are different. Do you think the model #88 is worth the $220 difference? I will ultimately chose between these 2 Imacs

The baseline model will do. Never upgrade RAM from Apple. Their prices are daylight robbery.

But get a Fusion or a 256GB SSD. It's well worth the upgrade.

I personally think the 256GB SSD is better since it has no moving parts, and so is one hell of a lot more reliable than Fusion, which still has moving parts. When the HDD part of Fusion fails, the entire drive is toast. Basically, the Fusion is as likely to fail as a regular HDD.

Fusion read/writes: 550/350 MB/s.
SSD read/writes: 750/650 MB/s.

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Problem with SSD'S is the capacity though. And who really wants to have externals hooked up to their imac? You don't buy that type of PC (AIO) just to hook things up to it.

I have been comparing the MD095LL/A vs the ME088LL/A at MacMall. 1499 or 1729. Difference is 2.9 or 3.2 chip, and the video cards are different. Do you think the model #88 is worth the $220 difference? I will ultimately chose between these 2 Imacs

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Like we stated earlier, for the usage you listed the base model will work. But if you mild gaming ever turns a bit higher, obviously, the slightly clocked/better GPU will help. Take into consideration, a discrete GPU will always be better than an integrated piece of crap.

I have been comparing the MD095LL/A vs the ME088LL/A at MacMall. 1499 or 1729. Difference is 2.9 or 3.2 chip, and the video cards are different. Do you think the model #88 is worth the $220 difference? I will ultimately chose between these 2 Imacs

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The base model will do you fine. These are 2012 models. You can possibly do better buying a refurb directly from Apple - $1399 or $1549 respectively. Also, if you have a Discover card you can chop off an additional 5%, bringing the price of the base model down to $1329 or $1472 for the higher model.

The base model will do you fine. These are 2012 models. You can possibly do better buying a refurb directly from Apple - $1399 or $1549 respectively. Also, if you have a Discover card you can chop off an additional 5%, bringing the price of the base model down to $1329 or $1472 for the higher model.

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The MD is a Late 2012 base 27" iMac and the ME is a Late 2013 base 27" iMac.

But I agree with you in that he will get a better deal from the refurb store.

Despite the Thunderbolt interface, that is a fairly slow 5400 rpm bus-powered drive. It's OK for backing stuff up, but if you are pulling program or data files from it, it's far slower than a Fusion Drive. In that case the perf. advantage of SSD in the main unit is greatly diluted.

That is the dilemma with SSD. If you are ever forced to use slower external storage because of the small SSD size, things are way slower than just using Fusion Drive.

Despite the Thunderbolt interface, that is a fairly slow 5400 rpm bus-powered drive. It's OK for backing stuff up, but if you are pulling program or data files from it, it's far slower than a Fusion Drive. In that case the perf. advantage of SSD in the main unit is greatly diluted.

That is the dilemma with SSD. If you are ever forced to use slower external storage because of the small SSD size, things are way slower than just using Fusion Drive.

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Not really, the Buffalo HD-PATU3 has decent read/write speeds of around 105-110 MB/s.

Not really, the Buffalo HD-PATU3 has decent read/write speeds of around 105-110 MB/s.

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As I said it's pretty good for a little bus-powered drive (I have dozens of them for archiving video data), but it's very slow relative to a Fusion Drive. There's nothing wrong with that, provided you don't need to put any frequently-accessed data programs on it.

However all should be aware that if getting a little SSD forces you to put frequently-accessed programs or data on a slow external drive, your workflow will overall be slower than just using a Fusion Drive.

If everything you use or will ever use over the life of your computer will fit on the SSD, then the performance advantages may be useful. In some specific situations SSD can be much faster than a Fusion Drive. But the *general* case is FD retains most of the performance of SSD at a far better cost per gigabyte.

However all should be aware that if getting a little SSD forces you to put frequently-accessed programs or data on a slow external drive, your workflow will overall be slower than just using a Fusion Drive.

You recommended the OP get a 256GB SSD or [1TB] Fusion Drive. Yes 1/4 the size is little relative to something 4x as big.

Now, 256GB may be all he will ever need for the life of that iMac. If so, by all means get the SSD. It's the same price as a 1TB FD, and much faster.

SSD is probably more reliable, but SSD drives fail also, plus operational errors happen. If you're doing serious work it must be backed up, regardless of drive type.

However the two specific models the OP mentioned were neither SSD nor FD. Both have 1TB 7200 (non-Fusion) drives. I would recommend getting either 256GB SSD or Fusion 1TB, based on what meets his size and performance needs.

That said those are discounted prices, and you can't get a new iMac 27 with SSD or FD for anything close to those prices. At least it's a 7200 rpm drive, not a 5400 like on the iMac 21.

Also -- between the two he listed, one is apparently a 2012 model, since the WiFi specs only state 802.11n. The other one has 802.11ac, which was added in 2013. Also the CPU's are listed as 3rd and 4th generation, respectively, implying 2012 vs 2013 model years. In general I'd get the 2013 unit.

However if money is really tight, he'll be happy with either one. If he doesn't have 802.11ac WiFi in his vicinity, that's a non-issue. The smaller 512MB GTX-660M GPU vs the 1GB GT-755M is only a factor for some things. Both GPUs are internally based on the same Kepler GK107 architecture.

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